Remember, after the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's main and virtually only condition for the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia (and later the other remaining armies of the Confederacy) was that they lay down their arms, go home and promise to be loyal to the United States of America. Lincoln was never in favor of punishment of the Confederacy or war crimes trials for its leaders. He knew, the only way to national reconciliation was to let everyone be countrymen again.

The radical reconstruction that followed Lincolns death was, in many ways, the wrong way to go, to the extent that it sought top punish the former members of the Confederacy. It would have been much more successful if it had simply sought to impose the new order concerning treatment of the former slaves, rather than also imposing northern "overlords" to run the local governments.

The new Iraqi leadership well understands that this is necessary if you are going to get anywhere with regard to national reconciliation. This is even more true in a country with such deep ethnic division to deal with after the war. We cannot condemn them for wanting to grant amnesty and move past the war, when we did the same thing ourselves 150 years ago.